Sorcha Dallas

Already one of Scotland’s most promising young artists by the time he was out of art school, Alex Pollard has spent the past few years consolidating his reputation – he was one of the three artists who represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2005 – and refining his practice.

His previous shows have toyed with questions of authorship, asking if the artist is in control of the art or vice versa: sculptures of stick men made from pencils doing battle with each other; lines creating themselves, running away from any human imposition.

There’s some of that here, but it’s part of a wider framework. The black marks of the title are those of a clown’s make up. Clowns – sinister, disturbing, sad behind the painted smiles – and their artifice are tied into music culture of the early 1980s: both Bowie in his Ashes to Ashes period and the gadfly dandies of the New Romantic movement are explicitly referenced. Clown Medallions (pictured) are exactly that: huge and menacing, each with a different clown’s face, ranging from blank and expressionless to horrified. Romo’s Getting Ready further blends make-up and representation: faces are constructed from make-up pencils, their features shaded in by the same. Identity, here as everywhere else, is a construct, a lie and a shield. It is not to be trusted.